Let’s go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play

Must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: [VIDEO]

Reminds me of this must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: [VIDEO] Sometimes I wonder what is is about specifically mobile gaming that makes this sort of thing so much more prevalent. Like it is very far from absent from PC or consoles, but it's still a bit different.

I’m not too familiar with gacha games, so I was intrigued. I thought the criticism of EA’s former CEO was funny. But the rest of the article felt like a lot of term-dropping and examples that aren't linked together into a cohesive theory, so I’m kind of disappointed. I think this industry talk about monetization ( [VIDEO] ) and Tynan Sylvester’s book “Designing Games” were a lot more informative. For example, the blog post says this but then doesn't really elaborate on what any of the clauses mean ("repeatable design levers", "without compromising the core gameplay experience"): > A healthy long-term monetization system should therefore have repeatable design levers that can be used to reliably generate demand without compromising the core gameplay experience. In contrast "Designing Games" has a whole section on fixed/variable reward schedules, e.g. (pg. 210): > We can avoid such shelf moments by superimposing several fixed ratio schedules. Consider what happens when the player can get a dollar for every 10th chest, a diamond for every 10th rock mined, and an arrow for every 10th goblin killed. ... The player shifts focus back and forth between activities, never missing a dopamine-driven beat. I asked some friends who play gacha games and they mentioned “stamina” mechanics as something that makes these game addictive. I’d never heard of it before, but apparently you’re limited to perform X number of actions per day. You can purchase some additional stamina/actions, but this c

Gamification as a field of study also reminds me a lot of this video[1] of a talk about tips for game developers. It is very interesting because it is from 2016 which is close to the time period you mentioned. I’m pretty sure this video has been shared on Hacker News a bunch. [1]: [VIDEO]

That isn't generational, it is part of your personality though. You just described two of the four player profiles in this talk on monetizing games: [VIDEO]

To be honst I think state run lotteries are a pretty good idea, if they would replace other forms of gambling, which apparently is becoming less and less true, especially with the rise of the completely under regulated prediction markets. Regarding the subject at hand, I think a very obvious and necessary first step is banning children from participation. Obviously this is easily circumventable, but at will at least be some form of harm reduction. I think another possibility as a first step is a forced limit on how much an account is allowed to spend in a given time, e.g. the company is only allowed to add digital goods not exceeding X euros to the owners account, together with restrictions on how these items are traded, this will make whaling impossible, which is apparently the most important demographic for developers. [ [VIDEO] ]

If you haven't seen it all ready just take a look at the infamous "Let's Go Whaling!" talk here [1]. They're not even hiding the fact the these are the type of people Free2Play/Pay2Win games prey on anymore. [1]. [VIDEO]

> If I understand correctly, you're saying that AAA game companies are at fault for producing video games that influence people through addictive psychological tricks to the point of ruining their lives. No, not AAA exclusively. But there is a certain set of games that relies on these tricks. See [VIDEO] > Are McDonald's commercials to blame for obesity and heart disease? Did McDonalds create a "Diabetes increases sales" video? Because AAA and mobile games did.